PIC18F452 Qwikflash Board Problem

Ello. First type poster here, was just going to see if you guys knew anything about this. My roommate and I are in a microprocessors class, and are building a qwikflash board with a PIC18F452 chip. We've done well up until this point until we tried to actually place the PIC in. What we've found is that it won't go in because of the capacitors in slots C15 and C16.

At the risk of sounding like a nub... were these supposed to go on the rear of the board? Because we can't find anywhere in assembly instructions that this was made clear.

If not, can they be left out of the design all together?

Thanks,

Drew

Drew,

I constructed a Qwikflash board a few years ago and pulled it down from the shelf. Be sure you have the caps referenced in the instructions. I am looking at my capacitors and they are about the size of a small diode and the pic fits fine. They are necessary to keep the power supply rails clean from signal glitches that can affect digital circuits. You may be using the larger ceramic caps. It should not be a problem to mount them from the bottom of the board. I ran the part number referenced in the instructions through the Digikey website and they do not appear to have them in stock.

I am sure you have been to the website for the book, but here is the link just in case:

PICbook: Home

I hope this helps,

Matt